(Story by Stephen McDaniel)
As soon as the light turned green, the Ankeny girls’ basketball team slammed its foot down on the gas and the Hawkettes never bothered to look back.
Ankeny turned in one of its best games of the season to open up postseason play as the 14th-ranked Hawkettes posted a 66-14 victory over visiting Sioux City East in a Class 5A regional semifinal on Saturday.
“It was really fun because it was a postseason game, and we had talked a lot about what we needed to improve to go on a run,” said Ankeny coach Nate Tobey. “We were able to show a lot of those things tonight against a really solid opponent that had won 15 games. Any time you get a win in the postseason, you’re happy about it, but I’m especially happy considering we did well on the things we needed to get better at.”
By no means were the Hawkettes expecting an easy game.
The Black Raiders (15-7) were a team that finished second in the Missouri River Conference with an 11-3 record while averaging nearly 60 points per game. East had won eight of its previous nine games, including an 87-31 win over Sioux City North and a 62-50 win over Tea Area within the last three contests.
But Saturday night just happened to have the stars align for the Hawkettes, who had one of their best offensive and defensive games of the season.
Ankeny (10-12) tied for its third-highest offensive output in 22 games, surpassed only by the 67 and 79 points it scored in a pair of wins over Urbandale. The 14 points were the fewest allowed by the Hawkettes all season.
“We were really focused on getting them off the 3-point line,” said junior guard Jayla Williams. “They’re a really good 3-point shooting team. I think they average like 30 shots a game and we only let them get like 10 3-point attempts, which is what we were striving for.”
Things initially got off to a slower start for both teams, but a trio of 3-pointers from Reagan Baldwin, Savannah Gage and Ainsley Kiene helped fuel an 11-0 run by the Hawkettes to open up the game.
The Black Raiders were held scoreless through the first 5 minutes of play before Kennedy Reynolds got them on the board.
Ankeny fired right back by going on a 9-0 run to close out a 20-5 first quarter, which would be the most points it allowed in a quarter all night.
The Hawkettes’ top four leading scorers in Baldwin, Gage, Kiene and Williams were all on the same page and firing on all cylinders as the quartet combined for all but eight of the team’s points. Williams led the way with 19 points and was followed by Kiene with 18, Gage with 12 and Baldwin with nine.
“Just realizing our end goal and also if our shots weren’t falling, we’d lay back on our defense,” said Williams, who also had seven rebounds, six steals and five blocks. “If our shots aren’t going in, no matter how hard we’re playing, we can get defensive stops that can convert into offensive plays.”
East’s Amiyah Drew managed to get a 3-pointer to fall 3 minutes into the second quarter, but those were the Black Raiders’ lone points of the period. Ankeny proceeded to go on a 17-0 run to take a 33-point lead into the half.
While the offense started to slow down a little in the second half, Ankeny’s defensive effort didn’t as the Hawkettes held East scoreless until there was just about a minute left in the third quarter. The 15-0 run they went on during that time only helped extend the lead.
The Black Raiders scored quickly with a 3-pointer to open up the final period, but a 10-0 run aided Ankeny in closing out its 52-point victory.
“We just have great players and great assistant coaches that put our players in an awesome position to succeed,” Tobey said. “We did that again tonight and just kept the pressure on and stayed the course of what we wanted to accomplish this game during the whole game, which was great to see.”
Ankeny will now face a familiar opponent in Tuesday’s regional final. The Hawkettes will travel to Waukee Northwest to face the No. 3 Wolves (17-4) at 7 p.m.
Ankeny dropped both of its games against the Wolves during the regular season. The Hawkettes suffered a 70-49 loss at Northwest on Jan. 3, then took the Wolves down to the wire before dropping a 54-51 decision on Feb. 3 at Ankeny.
The Hawkettes know that if they can have a repeat performance from their semifinal game, there’s a chance that they could be punching their ticket to the state tournament.
“I think this will give us a lot of confidence going into our next big game since the last time we faced Northwest, it was a close game,” Williams said.